January 31, 2013 | 10:53 am

Immigration Reform: A Jewish Imperative

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

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This week, a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators announced a new immigration reform effort. The next day, President Barack Obama gave a speech outlining his own plan for immigration reform. We hope these comprehensive efforts help resolve the continuing confusion over this issue; in just the first half of 2012, hundreds of bills and resolutions, often contradictory and misguided, were adopted by 41 state legislatures addressing immigration. Anti-immigrant extremists around the country are moving to amend the 14th Amendment to the Constitution’s guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States, recognizing only those born of citizens. This would affect the 350,000 children born in the United States each year to at least one undocumented immigrant parent. With an estimated 11.5-12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States today, who face deportation regardless of how long they have been here, change in our country is long overdue.

Contrary to popular perception, President Obama stepped up the detention of undocumented immigrants during his first term. In 2011, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants from the country, and nearly 55% were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors; in 2012, ICE detained 410,000 undocumented immigrants. However, on January 29, 2013, President Obama acknowledged that this situation should not continue. He proposed a legal procedure by which undocumented Americans could register and, once passing a background check, gain provisional legal status, and eventually permanent resident status and citizenship. The one potential hold-up is border security issues: Republican leaders may insist that the borders be absolutely secure before implementing the policy, while the President wants to implement the procedure earlier.

Oddly, this is occurring at a time when immigration to the U.S. is decreasing. The Pew Hispanic Center announced in April 2012 that the net migration from Mexico to the United States has stopped and possibly even reversed. They note that from 2005 to 2010, about 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States while the same number of Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children moved from the United States to Mexico. Asians, not Latinos, are now actually the largest group of new arrivals in the United States.

While there is mostly speculation on the effect of undocumented Americans on employment, it has been shown that more than 50 percent of them pay taxes. As with other Americans, they pay sales tax (for a total of more than $8 billion annually). In addition, in 2007 they and their employers were responsible for an estimated $11.2 billion in Social Security and $2.6 billion in Medicare contributions, in addition to other taxes and unemployment insurance payments. Since these workers use fake identification to obtain work, they can never receive unemployment insurance, Social Security, or Medicare, so they actually pay into our system without receiving benefits from it. In 2006, when Texas conducted the first comprehensive economic review of the impact of undocumented Americans, it was discovered that while these Americans produced $1.58 billion of revenue, they only received $1.16 billion in state services, so Texas made $462 million in profit from undocumented Texans.

Critics of immigration reform have used outlandish and false statements to justify their positions, echoing the bigotry against Italian and Jewish immigrants a century ago. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said this in 2010: “The majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in.” On January 29, 2013, the influential conservative radio pundit Rush Limbaugh made this outrageous statement concerning Hispanic immigrants: “I've seen…research data which says that a vast majority of arriving immigrants today come here because they believe that government is the source of prosperity, and that's what they support.”

No one has ever presented credible evidence to back either of these false claims. Most of these undocumented immigrants are from Mexico (59%, 6.8 million) and are fleeing poverty back home, yet most still live in poverty and insecurity here. About 3 million live in California and about 2 million in Texas, close to the border. Their life in the homeland they are fleeing is one of pain and sorrow and they must leave behind their families and all they know to try to survive. Their stories are tragic; at “My Immigration Story,” you can read their stories of anxiety over coming to the United States at an early age, but still subject to being deported to a country they never knew; of trying to comply with, and work within, the legal framework but being stymied by decades of bureaucratic foot-dragging; of relatives separated by a border, of loved ones’ burial places that cannot be visited.

We must remember as a nation the timeless rabbinic teaching, “Do not judge your fellow until you stand in his place” (Pirke Avot 2:4). We must not attack undocumented workers with the harmful, hateful rhetoric that many use today as they are stuck in a very challenging predicament that few can related to. The rabbis even promoted immigration: “He who has not made good in one place and fails to move and try his luck in some other place has only himself to complain about” (Bava Metzia 75b). One cannot remain stuck in an underprivileged region if it is a clear dead end for oneself and one’s family. In the Torah, there is a positive commandment to love the foreigner in our midst (Deuteronomy 10:18), and a negative commandment against oppressing or perverting justice for them in any way (Exodus 22:20, Deuteronomy 24:17). The rabbis elaborated on this prohibition: “You shall not wrong or oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not wrong with words, and you shall not oppress financially” (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael Mishpatim). We not only owe them basic human rights; we also have specific religious obligations to go above and beyond to protect them from harm. We should be grateful that America is a desired home for those fleeing dire straits and be proud of what we have to offer. 

Significant numbers of Jews immigrated (and continue to immigrate) to the United States without documentation. We also needed a safe refuge like many others fleeing poverty and persecution today. Our responsibility to the vulnerable immigrant (and heroic journeyer) requires that we honor the image of G-d in all people. Perhaps Emmanuel Levinas, the French Talmudist and Jewish philosopher, said it best: “The respect for the stranger and the sanctification of the name of the Eternal are strangely equivalent” (Nine Talmudic Readings: “Toward the Other,” p. 27).

Now is the time to hear the eternal calls of our religious traditions and of human conscience to ensure the dignity of all humans by providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. We are long overdue but sure to prevail, since our commitment is steadfast and justice is on our side.

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century.” Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

January 30, 2013 | 4:05 am

Kwame Appiah, Jewish Empiricism, and the Guns Debate

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

Philosophers have long debated how knowledge is acquired. Empiricists believe in the primacy of our senses for determining human knowledge. Rationalists believe that many of our most important ideas and knowledge can be attained by methods independent of our senses and experiences, such as by intuition and deduction.

One strict empiricist was Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a Scottish philosopher whose philosophy brought him in conflict with Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume, another Scottish philosopher of the same time period. Reid believed that our senses inevitably lead us to valid beliefs. Any belief that is contradictory to this “common sense” is false, given that common sense beliefs must be in accord with each other. He explained that every significant discovery is achieved through “patient observation, by accurate experiments, or by conclusions drawn by strict reasoning from observations and experiments, and such discoveries have always tended to refute, but not to confirm, the theories and hypotheses which ingenious men had invented” (Essays on the Intellectual Power of Man, 367-368).

This debate has led to fascinating, if sometimes confusing, dialogues. However, can empiricism offer practical ways to improve society today? Kwame Appiah, a philosopher at Princeton University who was raised and has studied and lectured all over the world, is one who seeks to know how fundamental progress can be achieved through translating philosophical thought into action. He has published widely in many areas of philosophy, and is keenly interested in how philosophical theory affects political thought and action.

Employing his extraordinary multi-cultural education, Appiah proposes in his lecture series Experiments in Ethics that we must have empirical backing for our philosophical theories. He explains:

Nothing is more usual than for writers, even, on moral, political, or physical subjects, to distinguish between reason and experience, and to suppose, that these species of arg¬umentation are entirely different from each other. The former are taken for the mere result of our intellectual faculties, which, by considering a priori the nature of things... establish particular principles of science and philosophy. The latter are supposed to be derived entirely from sense and observation, by which we learn what has actually resulted from the operation of particular objects…
But notwithstanding that this distinction be thus uni¬versally received, both in the active and speculative scenes of life, I shall not scruple to pronounce, that it is, at bottom, erroneous, at least, superficial…It is experience which is ultimately the foundation of our inference and conclusion (Experiments in Ethics, 10).

Appiah goes beyond the mere philosophical argument to urge an active pursuit of justice:

Morality is practical. In the end it is about what to do and what to feel; how to respond to our own and the world’s demands. And to apply norms, we must understand the empirical contexts in which we are applying them. No one denies that applying norms, you will need to know what, as an empirical matter, the effects of what you do will be on others, as an empirical matter, the effects of what you do will be on others (Experiments in Ethics, 22).

Jewish thinkers have also examined this issue. Maimonides explained the importance of the quest for truth and how we must alter our positions in line with new observations. Significantly, he noted that Aristotle had been accepted over the old beliefs of Jewish sages on an astronomical question: “It is quite right that our Sages have abandoned their own theory: for speculative matters every one treats according to the results of his own study, and everyone accepts that which appears to him established by proof” (Guide for the Perplexed, 2:8).

Rambam further explains: “Similarly it is not proper to abandon matters of reason that have already been verified by proofs … A man should never cast his reason behind him, for the eyes are set in front, not in back...” (Letter on Astrology)

Rav Moshe Feinstein, the 20th century Jewish legal authority, explained that many aspects of Jewish law can be affected by contemporary science: “We thus see that unless we are compelled otherwise, we should assume that matters that are dependent on nature should be based on the assessment of the rabbis of every given time” (Even Ha’Ezer, 2:3). On many matters we must apply contemporary research to apply timeless values in the real world. Other times, we break beyond the academies to the populace to “go out and see” (puk chazi) what is being done.

The rabbis had the humility to acknowledge new findings and the importance of legal evolution:

“Six things heal the sick”–and the Talmud explains each one.  You must first of all know that the healing practices that we do now is not the same as the healing practices that the earlier authorities practiced. And there were certain matters that the earlier authorities knew regarding properties of foods that we do not know now. And nowadays we cannot rely on those [early] healing practices, because we do not know how to perform the practice effectively… (Responsa of the Geonim, Harkavi, 394).

In the 1950s, Israeli Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog lamented that, as science progressed and added to our knowledge, “we bury our heads in the sand” when science comes in contact with the Torah: “It is imperative that we cultivate from within our holy yeshivot – from the geniuses among them – people to be men of science of every field, and thus we will not be dependent on others regarding matters of physiology, chemistry, electricity, and all matters that touch upon our holy Torah.”

For example, there is currently a debate concerning various gun control provisions, including a restoration of the assault weapons and high-capacity magazine ban that had been in place from 1994 to 2004. Consider the following facts from contemporary researchers:

• 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings during the past half century occurred in the United States
• 5 of the 11 deadliest shootings in America occurred from 2007 onward [after the Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire]
• States with the strictest gun control laws have the fewest deaths by firearms
• States with the most guns tend to have the most deaths by firearms
• The assassin who shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords fired 31 shots in 15 seconds due to his large magazine clip (33 rounds). Only when he stopped to reload was he subdued. Had he not had access to the large clip, he would have had to reload much earlier, and more people would have survived.
• In the July 2012 Aurora, Colorado mass shooting, the killer’s 100-round magazine jammed, perhaps saving lives. However, the killer also had a 40-round clip for his pistol.
• All 26 victims of the December 2012 Newtown, CT, mass killings were killed by a semi-automatic rifle with a high-capacity magazine.

In contrast, gun control opponents have flooded the Internet with claims that gun control does not work, but offer vague denunciations of old computer games, exhortations to arm even more citizens, and offer no explanation for why high-capacity magazines are necessary for hunting or target practice. There are moral truths that do not require empirical investigation to be verified, and every law of course cannot simply be overturned based upon new scientific findings. However, much of the application of those moral truths requires empirical tests to ensure they achieve the moral goal. For example, Jewish law wishes to save innocent life. In the debate between gun control and gun rights, the data clearly demonstrate why increased gun control will achieve this goal. Jewish law seeks to balance the value of self defense with the value of saving life. The statistics help us to identify what Jewish law must endorse. A more complete explanation of the Jewish approach to gun rights and gun control is needed.

This is just one example. If we truly care about honoring our core Jewish values then we must ensure our principles have the correct impact. To do so, we must embrace not only the descriptive but also the prescriptive, not only the “is” but also the “ought.” Rather than getting caught up in stubborn ideologies or partisan politics we must have the humility and courage to embrace empirical research and apply evidence within our argumentation.

There are countless Jewish moral dilemmas posed in the 21st century that require constant reassessment of contemporary research and the facts on the ground. Empirical research must be applied, in the most pressing way, to end-of-life issues and other pressing moral dilemmas. The Torah is actualized when our timeless Jewish values are kept alive and relevant by acknowledging and wrestling with new realities in the most intellectually honest and critical ways.

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Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century." Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

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January 27, 2013 | 11:41 am

Martin Luther King Day, the Presidential Inauguration, and A Reflection on Conscience

Posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz

One of the key tests of the quality of one’s faith is whether it moves us to live in accordance with our conscience. Faith cannot cover up our innate moral compass. Rather, it should enhance and refine our spiritual conscience. Our faith should provide us with the fuel to charge forward with what we already know in our essence we must do. 

No one in the 20th century taught this message more powerfully than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King taught again and again that we must not be passive, but put our values into practice to create a just society. He even argued that “to accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system.” This year, Martin Luther King Day coincided with the second inauguration of America’s first (and re-elected) black President, Barack Obama, and the President took the oath of office with his hand on King’s Bible. To some, this was an affirmation of King’s legacy; to others, it was an inappropriate attempt to moderate King’s radical vision. Who is correct? Perhaps both sides have evidence to support their case.

Martin Luther King did not begin as a radical. He had earned his doctorate in Boston and became pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. Then in December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a bus there, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King soon emerged as the leader of the campaign, and established the nonviolent, civil disobedient character of the early civil rights movement, based on his reading of Thoreau and Gandhi. From then until his assassination in April 1968, King was the leading civil rights figure in America, and in 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Whenever a new campaign emerged, from the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960, the Freedom Rides of 1961, or the Birmingham civil rights campaign of 1963, King was called on to lend his presence and often risk arrest along with the protesters. Before his death, he had traveled 6 million miles and given 2,500 speeches for civil rights.

Maintaining faith through such a period would be difficult for anyone. In 1960, after having been arrested five times (eventually, more than 20 times), beaten often and stabbed once, and had his home bombed twice, King reflected on his faith: “I could respond to my situation either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” Commenting on the question of “unearned suffering,” which has long troubled theologians, King found solace in religion: “I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of G-d unto social and individual salvation…. The suffering and agonizing moments through which I have passed over the last few years have also drawn me closer to G-d,” (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Suffering and Faith, 41-42).

Perhaps the most significant event of the entire movement was the August 28, 1963 “March on Washington,” when hundreds of thousands of civil rights advocates gathered in Washington, D.C. On this day, King walked a tightrope, as President John F. Kennedy, fearing the alienation of southern Democrats, tried to dissuade King from having the march, while young activists were upset that King and other leaders had promised there would be no civil disobedience at the march. However, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, one of the most powerful in all of human history, easily eclipsed any controversy that day, and played a huge role in the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1965, King’s leadership in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, interrupted when state troopers trampled and beat hundreds of marchers, helped pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (President Lyndon B. Johnson’s skill and courage in pushing this bill in spite of the risk of losing southern Democrats should also be acknowledged).

One of the great rabbinical followers of King was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was present at the 1963 rally and marched with King in Selma. Shortly after returning from the march, Heschel wrote to King: “The day we marched together out of Selma was a day of sanctification. That day I hope will never be past to me—that day will continue to be this day.... May I add that I have rarely in my life been privileged to hear a sermon as glorious as the one you delivered at the service in Selma prior to the march.”

Perhaps the greatest human freedom is the freedom to hear one’s inner truth and to strive to live by it. Heschel wrote: “Freedom means more than mere emancipation. It is primarily freedom of conscience, bound up with inner allegiance” (The Insecurity of Freedom, 1966).

While King often worked with President Johnson and other white political leaders, he rejected the idea that he was moving “too fast,” and increasingly became frustrated at white racism and the government’s abandonment of the War on Poverty in favor of the Vietnam War. He began to focus more on economic issues as well. As early as 1964, he wrote: “The Negro is still the poorest American—walled in by color and poverty. The law pronounces him equal, abstractly, but his conditions of life are still far from equal to those of other Americans,” (Negroes are not moving too fast; 177, 180). He called for a “grand alliance of Negro and white” that would seek to eradicate “social evils” such as unemployment, which affected all youth. In April 1967, precisely a year before his assassination, King dramatically broke his political alliance with President Johnson, stated his open opposition to the war, and further advanced his evolving social justice message: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered,” (A Time to Break Silence, 240).

The culmination of this campaign was to be the “Poor People’s Campaign,” a nationwide gathering of poor people who would camp out in Washington until the needs of the poor were met by the federal government. King was prepared to go against all his former political allies in this campaign. However, on the way to Washington, King stopped in Memphis, Tennessee, to help striking garbage collectors gain a fair wage. At this point he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. While many commemorations today stress the early, seemingly moderate political views of King, his later career shows that he was always pushing for a just society, regardless of the consequences. He still challenges us today: “To end poverty, to extirpate prejudice, to free a tormented conscience, to make a tomorrow of justice, fair play and creativity—all these are worthy of the American ideal,” (Showdown for Nonviolence, 71-72).

The great French philosopher and Talmudist Emmanuel Levinas taught: “The Torah itself is exposed to danger because being itself is nothing but violence, and nothing can be more exposed to violence than the Torah, which says no to it. The Law essentially dwells in the fragile human conscience which protects it badly and where it runs every risk. Those who accept this Law also go from one danger to the next. The story of Haman irritated by Mordecai attests to this danger. But this irresistible weight of being can be shaken only by this incautious conscience” (The Temptation of Temptation, Nine Talmudic Readings, p. 37).

This is the message of the Jewish tradition, that each day we must embrace ritual, prayer, and meditation that elevates the soul and awakens the human conscience to put our eternal values into practice today and every day. We are grateful as American Jews to have the inspiration of Dr. Martin Luther King as role models committed to overcome injustice.

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz is the Founder and President of Uri L'Tzedek, the Senior Rabbi at Kehilath Israel, and is the author of "Jewish Ethics & Social Justice: A Guide for the 21st Century.” Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America!"

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